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Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War

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Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War Journal of Strategic Security Volume 14 Number 2 Article 1 Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War Amos C. Fox U.S. Army, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss pp. 1-24 Recommended Citation Fox, Amos C.. "Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War." Journal of Strategic Security 14, no. 2 (2020) : 1-24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.14.2.1879 Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol14/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Strategic Security by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War Abstract Proxy wars dominate modern war fighting. Despite the frequency of proxy wars on today's battle field, the strategic studies community lacks sufficient models and strategic theories to frame proxy wars from the strategic level. This works seeks to build on the limited amount of preexisting theoretical work on proxy war by introducing five models of proxy relation - coerced, transactional, cultural, exploitative, and contractual. This models help policymakers, strategists, and practitioners understand and navigate through the strategic workings of today's proxy wars. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol14/ iss2/1 Fox: Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War Introduction Proxy war is creeping back to a point of strategic relevance. Simultaneously, proxy war’s slow, abstruse move to a position of dominance in contemporary armed conflict has occurred in an environment wanting of a strategic theoretical framework. Most contemporary proxy war literature offers cursory definitions of the phenomena but fails to articulate the strategic mechanics amongst actors found therein. In many cases policymakers, strategists, and practitioners apply an anchor bias when analyzing proxy war, or they weaponize a narrative to offset the coarseness of proxy relationships and they describe those relationships in a more palatable manner. For example, in a recent discussion on proxy war, analysts Jack Watling and Erica Gaston mentioned that few state actors are willing to openly define proxy relationships in that manner because of the negative connotations associated with the proxy label.1 Yet, in softening proxy war’s coarseness the distinct character of a proxy relationship is overlooked, hidden, and lost. The U.S. Department of Defense’s joint force doctrine, for example, incorrectly categorizes the strategic relationship of proxy war by contending that when state actors employ proxies in pursuit of their objectives, they (the state actor) are operating outside of armed conflict, while their proxies are operating within the realm of armed conflict.2 This assertion is incorrect because by virtue of employing a surrogate to accomplish its military objectives, which support the larger policy objectives, a state actor is engaged in armed conflict. Furthermore, as is evident in state actor-driven proxy wars, state actors provide combat advisors, liaisons, logistics, and other military and support capabilities that enable its proxy to accomplish its (the state actor’s) military objectives. Based on the arch of the current strategic environment, which portends continued proxy wars, it is paramount for the strategic studies community to continue developing theoretical taxonomies that allow policymakers, strategists, practitioners, and historians to effectively navigate proxy war’s murky waters. To be sure, as Professor Vladimir Rauta contends, “In order to prevent or prevail in fighting proxy wars a strategic understanding of why proxy wars are waged is needed.”3 This work’s goal is to shed further light on the broad character of strategic actors within proxy environments 1 Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2020 Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 14, No. 2 and describe how risk—strategic and existential—factors into those relationships. Risk, for its part, is the binding agent between principal and proxy, and by extension, the cleavage points between those actors. Although proxyism—a unified theory of proxy war—is again gaining relevance in war, proxies and proxyism have a long, rich history in the conduct of war. This history, coupled with recent observations in proxy war provide a useful window into the mechanics and character of proxy war, proxy relationships, and how risk influences the proxy environment. Historian John Keegan contends that surrogates have long played an important role in war.4 For example, Italian condottieri and Swedish companies for-hire were contractual proxies that played pivotal roles in the wars of the Middle Ages.5 The Great Northern War’s (1700-1721) battle of Poltava (July 8, 1709)—decisive in facilitating Sweden’s strategic decline while igniting Russia’s rise on the international stage—saw both Sweden and the Tsardom of Muscovy heavily rely on Cossack proxies to increase their pool of available forces and offset the loss of their native forces.6 Hessians—German contractual proxies for hire from the state of Hesse— played important roles during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, perhaps none more noticeable than serving as British auxiliaries during the American Revolution.7 This says nothing of the Cold War’s prodigious count of proxy wars as the Soviet Union and the West battled for ideological supremacy around the globe. Although dormant for many years, Russia’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine ushered in a new era of proxy war. Russia’s employment of culturally aligned and contractual proxies, dedicated to Moscow and the Kremlin’s policy objectives, shook the western world as it watched Ukraine lose control of large portions of its country. Western governments are articulating the prevalence of proxy force employment around the globe. American combatant commander reports to the U.S. Congress regularly highlight the threat posed by proxies within their specific areas of responsibility. Outside the U.S., in a 2019 speech, former U.K. Defense Secretary Penny Mordaunt argued about the dangers of proxy forces in modern armed conflict and for a credible deterrent to those dangers.8 Despite the vociferous contentions from commenters such as historian Lawrence Freedman or analyst Michael Kofman, July 2020’s Trilateral Contact Group agreement between Ukraine, Russia’s proxies, and Moscow, all but rubber-stamped the Kremlin’s strategic and territorial 2 https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol14/iss2/1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.14.2.1879 Fox: Strategic Relationships, Risk, and Proxy War gains in Ukraine’s Donets River Basin (Donbas), demonstrating how effective proxy campaigns can result in strategic wins.9 Based on proxy war’s far-reaching nature in today’s strategic environment, it is paramount to further develop proxy war’s strategic framework and map the basic structure of relationships between strategic actors therein. This work seeks to increase the strategic and defense study community’s professional body of knowledge on proxy war. It does so by adding to proxy war’s existing literature. Specifically, this work further advances the idea that five models of strategic relationship—exploitative, coercive, cultural, contractual or transactional—exist within a proxy war framework. A proxy, or principal-agent relationship, takes one of these five forms. Risk is the sinew that binds, and conversely, can lead to the unraveling of actors within a principal-agent relationship. Adroit players and observers in proxy war understand this and seek to manipulate it, much in the same fashion Napoleon Bonaparte employed his strategy of central position throughout the Napoleonic Wars. This work elaborates on this idea, discussing how strategic and existential risk can be manipulated in proxy war both for and against a principal-proxy dyad. A brief review of terms and definitions are required before beginning that analysis. Definitions, Terms of Reference, and Framing Proxy Relationships Proxy war and its associated ideas and terms are contested concepts. As a result, no standard exists in which to point to guide proxy war discussions. In the absence of an accepted set of concepts and lexicon, those listed within this section are the standard used throughout this work. Proxy war is a broad taxonomy of armed conflict, not a discrete form or type of warfighting. Broadly associating one form of warfighting with proxy war demonstrates intellectual laziness and is not useful in making sense of the phenomena. While proxy wars fight be fought through partisans or insurgents as irregular wars or insurgencies, this is not the only way in which these types of wars are fought. Russia’s rapacious hybrid campaign in eastern Ukraine, which heavily relied on conventional combat operations, stresses this point. The war’s Donbas Campaign, which birthed the violent, bloody, and destructive battles of Ilovaisk, Donetsk Airport, Luhansk Airport, and Debal’tseve, has resulted in 13,200 Ukrainian dead 3 Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2020 Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 14, No. 2 and 30,000 wounded since the war began in the spring of 2014.10 This is a clear signal that today’s proxy wars are more than just state-sponsored insurgencies waged in political hinterlands, but instead can fall anywhere along the continuum of conflict.A proxy war’s form or method of warfighting is subject to each participant’s political narrative, preference, objectives, and resources. The principal, on the other hand, is constrained by the narratives, objectives, and resource limitations of its chosen agent, and the bond that exists between it and its surrogate. Equally important, proxies must not be taken entirely as non-state actors. Proxy forces, based upon the type of principal-agent dyad, can span the spectrum from state armies fighting as surrogates for a benefactor, to proto-state forces fighting for international legitimation, to partisan groups cobbled together by an actor to do its tactical dirty work.
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